FEATURED ARTICLES ABOUT CHEST PAIN - PAGE 4

Q. My neighbor had a heart attack last year and now walks every day for exercise. His doctor told him to cover his face when he's outside in cold weather. Why? A. All people who have heart disease should protect their faces from cold wind and rain. The cold can chill their faces and cause chest pain. It can even cause a heart attack. Your heart muscle needs oxygen to pump blood throughout your body. The heart gets its own oxygen from the blood that is pumped to it through the vessels on its outside surface.

Q: I am a 21-year-old woman. When I was about 7 or 8 years old, the doctor told me I had a heart murmur but that it was nothing to be scared about and it wasn't dangerous. For several years now, I have had chest pains--a tightening in the chest--and when I try to inhale the pain gets worse. I take a few short breaths and relax and then the pain goes away. These pains don't happen very often but why do they happen at all? A: I don't blame you for being concerned. Chest pain is nothing to take lightly.

Q-A sudden chest pain took the life of my husband several years back, and now I am frightened by the complaints of chest pain that my son reports he has. The school nurse checked him out and didn't think it was too much, but I can't help but worry. Does the fact his father died from heart disease mean I must worry about this chest pain in an 11-year-old boy? He is very active, and bright, and I want to be sure. Will you please help me? A-Your concerns and fears are very understandable, but the chances of your son having the same condition his father did, at his current age, are most improbable.

Doctors have won federal approval of a new blood test to help them tell which patients suffering chest pain are not having a heart attack. Up to 5 million people go to U.S. emergency rooms each year complaining of chest pain, but only about 1 in 5 is having a heart attack, according to the Food and Drug Administration. Other ailments, from severe indigestion to gallstones, can mimic a heart attack--and up to half of chest-pain patients have atypical symptoms or test results that make diagnosis a challenge, said Dr. Steven Gutman, the FDA's chief of clinical tests.

A new study finds that people who believed they were treated unfairly were more likely to suffer a heart attack or chest pain. Those who felt they experienced the worst injustice were 55 percent more likely to experience a coronary event than people who thought life was fair, according to the report in Tuesday's Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health. The researchers examined medical data from 6,081 British civil servants who were asked how strongly they agreed with this statement: "I often have the feeling that I am being treated unfairly."

Q. With several bouts of chest pain in my history, but no diagnosis of heart attack, I'm now on my way to having my heart arteries X-rayed. I know what the test (coronary angiography) is all about, but wonder what they're looking for. Are they trying to find a "silent" heart attack? A. There are many excellent reasons for undergoing a coronary angiography. It will show your physician the state of your coronary (heart) arteries and how well they are performing their job of bringing the flow of blood to your heart muscles.

EXERCISING WHEN SICK: A recent study in Freiburg, Germany, found that people experiencing extreme fatigue while receiving treatment for cancer felt less weary after six weeks of moderate aerobic exercise. In some cases, their heart rates dropped by 20 points or more. Check with a doctor before workouts, though. CHEST PAIN: When a medical condition, such as a heart ailment, causes chest pain while lying down, a small tilt of the bed may help. Some physicians who were treating patients with as many as seven attacks at night advised them to elevate the heads of their beds by about 10 degrees.

In response to the article regarding the state investigation into paramedic delays (Page 1, Aug. 24), I think there is another avenue that needs to be investigated. How many of the calls for ambulances in the city of Chicago were actually of an emergency nature? Calling an ambulance for a non-emergency ailment ties up an ambulance so that people who have been shot or are having chest pain have no choice but to wait. The paramedics cannot refuse to give care based on what ails a patient regardless if it is a ridiculous complaint or not. This also occurs in emergency rooms.

Q-If a chest pain can be either angina or a heart attack, does this mean they are both the same thing? I take nitroglycerin tablets for my angina. Is this all right? A-Angina is chest pain caused by a lack of oxygen to the muscles of the heart. This occurs when there is a narrowing of the coronary arteries, which provide oxygen and nutrients to the muscles of the heart. Yes, angina may be related to a heart attack. In angina, the partial cutoff in blood supply to the heart usually reverses itself and the pain goes away, but if the coronary arteries become completely closed off, the area of the heart that can no longer receive oxygen or nutrients is permanently damaged, and that is a heart attack.